‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Bosses & Anson Mount on Pike’s Tough Decision & ‘Doctor Who’

Captain Pike makes what Anson Mount calls “maybe the toughest” decision of the series in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 premiere, streaming as of July 23. TV Insider spoke with him and executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers about that and more from the beginning of the series’ penultimate season. Warning: Spoilers for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 premiere ahead!

While observing an interstellar storm, the Enterprise ends up caught up in it after receiving a Mayday from a starship distress buoy. It takes them back 65 million years in the past, to where Una (Rebecca Romijn), La’an (Christina Chong), and Ortegas (Melissa Navia) deal with dinosaurs on Earth while those still on board the Enterprise, including Pike, contend with Martians, the leader of whom, upon learning they haven’t been told when the crew is from and there’s a federation that helps one another, makes off with the ship’s primary antimatter fuel cell, to use against their enemies.

The Enterprise takes off in pursuit, but when it comes time to stop the Martians from blowing up the fifth planet of the system — not Jupiter — Pike makes the call to let them proceed. After all, in their time, that planet does not exist. That blast also sends them back home … where they learn they answered their own Mayday and are responsible for humanity’s origins since a fragment of the planet that was destroyed is the asteroid that hit Earth and led to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Still, that wasn’t an easy call for the captain to make, Mount tells TV Insider.

“Star Trek has a history of famously tough moral decisions for its captains. And that’s one of the toughest, maybe the toughest I’ve come across in this series at least. And it’s a snap decision, but I think the correct one,” he says. “And it tests everything that Pike thinks he believes in, in order to allow that to happen. It’s not easily done. And yeah, I think it was the right decision.”

The premiere also sees April (Adrian Holmes) offer Pike a promotion, to commodore. The captain ultimate turns it down, but suggests that Una is ready for a promotion, and she becomes a commander, taking her one step closer to captain and her own starship. How much does knowing his own fate and his rank when it happens (fleet captain) play a role in that?

“For the show to have really happened at all, we had to figure out a way for Pike, this character who knows his own third act, to be in a place where there could be some consequence. So, I guess if you know your fate, not very dramatic. So, it really was about him learning, even though his future seems to be truncated, that the journey is the destination, which is some of the joy that I try to play, which hopefully you’ve seen,” Mount says. “But at the end of Season 3, he’s given this gift of a fully realized life, which kind of alleviates all of that. So then in Season 4, it really comes down to the question of if it’s a journey, this life, is a journey complete without a conclusion?”

Adds Myers, “It does play some role in it, but I think part of it is that every day for him is about finding something to live for. And I think that what he is experiencing at the beginning of the season is he still very much feels that. Just because you know where things are going to end doesn’t mean that you wake up every day with something that surprises you. And I still think there are things he knows that will still surprise him. And that’s I think the journey that he heads on the beginning of the season.”

While on Earth dealing with a threat they can’t kill because of the risk of changing the timeline, La’an punches a dinosaur. She breaks her hand, but as she tells M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Chapel (Jess Bush), she doesn’t feel any pain. She’s felt different for a while; while she’s always had elevated strength and reflexes, now her body feels more attuned. She wonders if the recessive augmented genes she carries could have been activated somehow.

This is starting a journey for La’an, explains Goldsman. “We have a job to do for characters who we know don’t appear in canon. And so we’re trying to do that thoughtfully and thoroughly, starting now.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds also continues to reference Doctor Who when it comes to Pelia (Carol Kane). This time, she remarks that she saw an interstellar storm like the one they encounter in this episode once, a long time ago, and she was in a phone box at the time, obviously referring to the TARDIS.

“It’s big out there. And I think we’re not the first people to imagine intersections between the Whoverse and ours. So we’re just going along for the ride,” says Goldsman.

He “would never date to wager a guess” which Doctor Pelia traveled with, but Myers, holding up four fingers, adds, “I’m not going to say it, but maybe somewhere in the one to four range.” (That would be William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, or Tom Baker.)

So, which Doctor do you think Pelia traveled with? And what did you think of the premiere? Let us know in the comments section below.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Thursdays, Paramount+